Black fungus: ENT Hosp runs on fumes

50 patients turned away daily due to lack of beds; 200 crammed into 150-bed hosp

The Government ENT Hospital in Koti, the designated nodal centre for Telangana state for treating cases of mucormycosis, or black fungus, is running on fumes. In a grim tale, the staff at the hospital says they are turning away around 50 such patients every day over the past three days.

All of its 150 beds are full with patients suffering from the disease, and another 50 patients are crammed into the facility.

“We do not have space anymore,” a doctor at the hospital told Deccan Chronicle on Sunday. “The

Covid-19 vaccination centre here is being converted for treatment of black fungus cases, and we can add another 30 beds there,” the doctor said.

Packed with patients suffering from varying degrees of mucormycosis, the hospital has requested, via the official online request system, for

700 vials of liposomal amphoterecin-B injections. “We need these 700 to start with and need more supplies every day.”

“Gandhi Hospital needs another 100 vials urgently, while private hospitals are waiting for 200 more to keep the treatment going,” a doctor said.

Gandhi Hospital is the nodal centre in Telangana for treating Covid-19 patients. But, it has been designated as a treatment facility for black fungus cases when the patients are Covid-19 positive.

The ENT Hospital, with three surgical beds, was never meant to cope with such an influx of emergency cases. The primary and first line of defence treatment for black fungus is debridement -- the cleaning of the sinuses. This takes anywhere up to two to three hours for a patient.

“Since we have only three beds, we are not able to do more than 10 debridements a day. Ideally, we should be doing around 50 a day so we can repeat the procedures on all patients who need it, within two or three days of the first cleaning. But that requires more surgical beds, and more teams of specialists,” the doctor said.

The faster the cleaning, the better the chances of healing. The procedure removes the growing mucor from the sinuses, prevents it from eating into the bones, reaching the eyes, or the brain.

Once the fungus takes hold of the eyes, and if the treatment is delayed, the infected eye, or both eyes must be removed. This is to prevent the infection from reaching the brain.

And if it reaches the brain, then the chances of the patient’s survival get slimmer by the hour.

“It is not just the eyes that need to be removed. Sometimes, even the bones around it, sometimes up to the cheek, need to be removed; leaving gaping holes that need complicated reconstruction surgeries’ something we are not just able to provide the patient,” a doctor said.